


the universe is alone (and so are you)

by Allegory



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, everything is a metaphor, suicidal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-18 01:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10606137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allegory/pseuds/Allegory
Summary: Sometimes life is just a game of hack and slash; wake and sleep, kill and eat. The circumstances that make up our hemisphere exist on the same plane. Nonetheless, the skin under Keith’s nails still annoy the fuck out of him.





	

Keith watches the universe drift by him. It’s a lonely creation, pitch black and vast.

The only thing that comes close is the ocean, he supposes. He’d seen it once before, during a geography field trip back when he still had his father. Keith had snuck away from the group, dropped his sack of collected litter behind a dune of fine grained sand and climbed, climbed until he reached the top of a rocky outcrop. He’d got on all fours and crawled through a snare of thorny bushes. At the end was a crisp view of the ocean dipped in an orange moon, washed in lilac, a horizon that seemed to stretch forever. On and on, the waves lapped back and forth.

It had hit young Keith, his face cut by a thorn and his calves sore from the climb, that maybe he wasn’t very human. At that instant he’d never felt such an intense connection to anything, like the only thing he needed was to _jump,_ to let the waters envelop him, wrap his throat and wring him into- nothing. Everything?

Sometimes Keith wishes he’d found out. The universe is lonely. But at least there’s the two of them.

*

Keith perches atop the kitchen isle, swinging his legs just a little. He holds his knife but isn’t cleaning it or checking for nicks and dents. It’s absolutely still in his grip. Keith sees himself in the steel, dusky black eyes and a child’s face, some pariah of fate. Keith could throw himself in front of a bus and have the bus skid right off of him. He could jump straight into a meteor belt and the rocks would veer away. Death won’t claim him. Keith has stared at this child’s face for too many weeks, months, years. He does not lie when he says he wants to kill the Galra. Only, he would like to start with himself.

The noise outside interrupts his thoughts. Keith glances up slowly, almost languid and dream-like, to see Hunk and Lance with two plates of space cookies in hand. Hunk’s oven gloves are mottled with pink hearts while Lance’s are printed with cute cartoon sharks. They ask him, eagerly, to try their cookies. Keith swings off the counter. He slides his knife into its sheath and pops one of the cookies in his mouth. Crunch. Munch. Gulp.

They’re good, Keith assures. Hunk and Lance high-five each other with their gloves on and rush off to find the other paladins, a cloud of dust left in their wake. The door slides close. Keith pulls out his knife and in one deadly motion he throws it into the wall. Altaen architecture doesn’t yield; the steel shrieks and rattles when it falls to the floor. Keith picks it up, his fist trembling now, the child’s face no longer as certain.

He throws it at the wall again.

*

Keith showers after dinner one day. He traces his scars and peels the calluses off his fingers and knuckles. Everything is thick and groggy today. The world seems to bleed into each other and time sags like a molasses. Keith is having a hard time remembering what he’s doing on the aircraft of some foreign species, playing paladin with a ragtag bunch of kids. The luminescent yellow light blurs his thoughts more than his eyes but he still has to squint at his nails, or the crevice underneath them. The skin there has frayed. No matter how he tries to angle his fingers, they’re too short to be peeled off. Blood thuds in his ears. He gets the overwhelming urge to chop off his fingers.

 *

These emotions, or the absence thereof, are normal. Keith has grown up with them all his life and they are no further from reality than geometry is from Pythagoras’ triangle. Sometimes life is just a game of hack and slash; wake and sleep, kill and eat. The circumstances that make up our hemisphere exist on the same plane. Nonetheless, the skin under Keith’s nails still annoy the fuck out of him.

**Author's Note:**

> yall tired of living? c'mere fam.  
> tumblr @ warmwintersun


End file.
